Closing Down the K.G.B.

By David Wise;

Published: November 24, 1991

YASENEVO.

Even to most Soviet citizens, the name is unfamiliar. But to anyone in the K.G.B., it needs no explanation. The highly guarded, restricted compound in a wooded area southwest of Moscow is the headquarters of the K.G.B.'s First Chief Directorate, its intelligence and espionage arm. The spies.

It is night, and we are speeding east along Moscow's outer ring road in a black Volga. I am the first Western reporter ever to be allowed into the directorate, the Pervoye Glavnoye Upravlenie. The huge K.G.B. man at the wheel has the broad shoulders of a linebacker; he is so tall that his head touches the top of the car.

All at once, through the darkness and the mist, the red lights atop the 21-story skyscraper inside Yasenevo come into view. A few minutes later, the Volga swings into an unmarked exit on the right. All that is visible from the ring road is an international "no entry" sign, designed to turn back any hapless civilians who take a wrong turn.

The Volga moves along a narrow road amid birch trees and we come, incongruously, to a small farm-style gate. The car stops for a moment, scrutinized by unseen armed watchers in a guardhouse just beyond. Then the gate swings open.

I had asked to visit Yasenevo, not believing it would really happen. Suddenly, in a burst of post-coup glasnost, I am actually inside. It is surreal.

Physically, the parallels with the rival Central Intelligence Agency are remarkable. Like the C.I.A., the espionage directorate is out in the woods, away from the capital. Indeed, K.G.B. insiders call Yasenevo "the Russian Langley." The sign at the C.I.A. turnoff reads "Bureau of Public Roads." Inside the grounds of the directorate, the sign says, "Scientific Research Center." Even the rivals' ultramodern offices bear a close resemblance.

Like C.I.A. officers, who call their agency by a variety of nicknames, of which "the Company" is best known, Soviet case officers never refer to the K.G.B. -- the initials stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, or Committee for State Security -- by name. They call headquarters the "les" (forest) or the "kontora" (office).

In a moment, we are at a smaller, low building, its driveway bathed in bright floodlights. With my K.G.B. escort, I am shown to a second-floor reception room.

A few minutes later, Maj. Gen. Vyacheslav Ivanovich Artyomov, the acting chief of the directorate, mounts the stairs. He is 55 years old, a career spy with a crew cut, sharp features and a swarthy complexion. He invites me into an adjoining office furnished much like a traditional Russian living room, with two large low cocktail tables set with bottles of mineral water.

Forget Boris and Natasha, the cartoon character Russian spies. At the top, the K.G.B. leadership today is smart, smooth, sophisticated and well tailored. For three hours in near-perfect English, Artyomov covers a wide range of subjects, from past abuses to the spy agency's future.

Artyomov says he was born in Grozny, in the Caucasus, "the son of a truck driver." He pauses for a beat, and adds, "a teamster." It strikes me that Artyomov's command of the language is all the more remarkable if, as he claims, he has never lived in an English-speaking country.

He graduated from Moscow's Oriental Institute, joined the K.G.B. in the late 1950's and was a station chief, or resident, as they are known in the K.G.B., in Africa and Asia. As he speaks, his left hand fiddles with a double row of white worry beads, or chotki , a habit he picked up in his years abroad in Muslim countries. As acting chief, his rank is roughly equal to that of the director of the C.I.A. But this is the K.G.B., after all, and nothing is quite what it seems. Artyomov is an operational name, an alias. He declines to reveal his true name. (From other sources, I was able to learn that it is Vyacheslav Ivanovich Gurgenev.)

I ask him whether even a repackaged K.G.B. could ever fit into a democratic system. "Unfortunately for the K.G.B., it became and remained until recently the tool of the party," he responds. "And the party used it indiscriminately against all sorts of dissent. The K.G.B. should have completely divorced from the party. It should just be part of the Government. Intelligence agencies exist in all countries, and the K.G.B. should be like them. I believe it is possible.

"The K.G.B. had become a mammoth, monstrous organization, with too many functions. Instead of an institution to protect the state, the K.G.B. became an institution dangerous to the state." For a moment, I thought I had wandered into a seminar in Washington on the dangers of intelligence agencies to democratic government. Did Artyomov talk that way before the coup? Did he really believe what he was saying? He certainly seemed to, but there was no way to tell.

"I believe what remains of the K.G.B. will be two separate institutions," he says. "One for counterintelligence, antiterrorism, organized crime and corruption on the highest levels. The other, this directorate, will just be foreign intelligence, without any domestic powers. I don't know what the name will be, but I'm quite sure it will never be K.G.B. again. The society simply will not stand it."